Object data
oil on panel
support: height 37 cm × width 73 cm
outer size: depth 5 cm (support incl. frame)
Willem van Diest
Seascape off Scheveningen Beach
c. 1629
Technical notes
Support The panel consists of two horizontally grained oak planks (approx. 19.5 and 17.5 cm), approx. 0.8 cm thick. The reverse is bevelled on all sides, though only very slightly at the top and bottom, and has regularly spaced saw marks on the upper plank only. Dendrochronology has shown that the youngest heartwood ring was formed in 1609. The panel could have been ready for use by 1620, but a date in or after 1626 is more likely.
Preparatory layers The double ground does not extend over the edges of the support at the top and bottom, and extends partially over the left and right edges. The first layer is a thin, semi-opaque off-white. The second ground is a thin smooth, opaque orange-pink consisting of white and some brown pigment particles.
Underdrawing No underdrawing could not be detected with the naked eye, infrared photography or infrared reflectography.
Paint layers The paint does not extend over the edges of the support at the top and bottom, and extends over the left and right edges. There appears to be a grey underpainting for the boats and figures. The composition was built up from the back to the front, with the sky and sea being applied first in a single thin layer. These were executed wet in wet along with the distant boats, followed after drying by the other boats and the rather schematic figures, keeping to their positioning in the underpainting. Opaque, unctuous paint was used to create smooth layers, soft impasto and visible brushstrokes, especially in the light-coloured passages. Subtle blending was employed for the boats, but in other areas the application is sketchy and expressive, for example in the sky and in the water, particularly for the highlights on the crests of the waves. A cross-section at the shoreline shows a build-up in two phases: first the water, consisting predominantly of white and small black pigment particles and grey glassy shards, followed by an opaque off-white layer, containing white, transparent red and black pigment particles. Three more figures were initially planned to the left of the couple in the foreground, but later painted out with the beach. This is visible both to the naked eye and with infrared imaging.
Emma Boyce, 2022
Scientific examination and reports
- technical report: W. de Ridder / G. Tauber, RMA, 12 January 1999
- infrared photography: E. Boyce, RMA, 6 September 2010
- paint samples: E. Boyce, RMA, nos. SK-A-1382/1-2, 6 September 2010
- infrared reflectography: E. Boyce, RMA, 23 September 2010
- technical report: E. Boyce, RMA, 27 September 2010
Condition
Fair. There is a slight difference in level between both planks. The join and the perimeter of the panel display small losses of paint and ground. The thick, cracked varnish has significantly yellowed, and although it retains an even gloss it saturates poorly.
Provenance
…; from Jonkheer Jacob Eduard van Heemskerck van Beest (1828-1894), Utrecht, The Hague and Dalfsen, fl. 20,000, to the Nederlandsch Museum voor Geschiedenis en Kunst, The Hague (inv. no. 3921), with the rest of his collection, 1878; transferred to the museum, as Jeronimus van Diest ?, March 1887; on loan to the Nederlandsch Scheepvaart Museum, Amsterdam, October 1921-January 1931
Object number: SK-A-1382
Copyright: Public domain
The artist
Willem van Diest (? The Hague in or before c. 1610 - ? Amsterdam in or after 1668)
It is not known when Willem van Diest was born, nor who his parents were. His earliest dated picture is from 1629.1 He would not have been much younger than 18 at the time, so his year of birth must have been around 1610 at the latest. He is first documented in The Hague on 6 August 1631 at the baptism of his daughter Adriana in the Grote or Sint-Jacobskerk. No mention of his marriage has been found, but the mother of his children was Swaentje Coijmans, who is called ‘his wife’ in an archival document. Equally, there is no record of his teacher, but it could have been Jan Porcellis, who was living in nearby Voorburg in 1626 and bought a house in The Hague the following year. In 1634 the Hague authorities commissioned a painting from Van Diest of the heroism of the civic guard in 1631, when it prevented a merchantman from Lübeck that had run aground on Scheveningen beach from falling into the hands of privateers from Dunkirk.2 He was paid 72 guilders. It was not until 1639 or thereabouts that Van Diest is listed in the books of the Guild of St Luke. He ran into financial difficulties in the 1640s, when a baker, several beer merchants, a carpenter and a goldsmith began dunning him for unpaid bills. In 1656 he was one of the founders of the Confrerie Pictura artists’ society. His last dated work is from 1668.3 In January of that year he rented a house in Amsterdam, and that was probably where he died. His son, Jeronimus van Diest (c. 1631/34–in or after 1677), also became a marine painter and was very probably his pupil.
Willem van Diest specialized in river and beach scenes and seascapes. His early output is tonal and betrays the debt he owed to Porcellis and Simon de Vlieger. While the latter remained an important source of inspiration, Jan van Goyen became a major influence in the 1640s.
Eddy Schavemaker, 2022
References
F.D.O. Obreen, Archief voor Nederlandsche kunstgeschiedenis: Verzameling van meerendeels onuitgegeven berichten en mededeelingen betreffende Nederlandsche schilders, plaatsnijders, beeldhouwers, bouwmeesters, juweliers, goud- en zilverdrijvers [enz.], II, Rotterdam 1879-80, p. 134; ibid., IV, 1881-82, pp. 60, 79, 126; ibid., V, 1882-83, pp. 99, 154; U. Thieme and F. Becker (eds.), Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, IX, Leipzig 1913, p. 251; A. Bredius, Künstler-Inventare, I, The Hague 1915, p. 236; ibid., V, 1918, pp. 1507; ibid., VI, 1919, p. 2144; Kelch in J. Giltaij and J. Kelch (eds.), Praise of Ships and the Sea: The Dutch Marine Painters of the 17th Century, exh. cat. Rotterdam (Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen)/Berlin (Bode-Museum) 1996-97, pp. 223-24; Buijsen in E. Buijsen et al., Haagse schilders in de Gouden Eeuw: Het Hoogsteder Lexicon van alle schilders werkzaam in Den Haag 1600-1700, exh. cat. The Hague (Haags Historisch Museum) 1998-99, pp. 118-22, 299; De Beer in Saur Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon: Die Bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker, XXVII, Munich/Leipzig 2000, p. 277; Bredius notes, RKD
Entry
On the left two three-masters are sailing out to sea under a cloudy grey sky. The wind is blowing six fishing pinks towards the land, where a group of people are standing around an auction of the latest catch in the middle ground. To the left of them a strange ritual called woman-rinsing is taking place, which was in vogue until midway through the seventeenth century and is also described by Constantijn Huygens and Jacob Cats. While out on a stroll on the beach in the month of May a suitor would suddenly pick up his beloved and take her into the breakers. After being spattered she was carried to the top of a dune, pressed into the loose sand and rolled downward. As the denouement the young woman was then rubbed with salty sand on the beach.4 Willem van Diest was among the very few artists to depict this practice.5
The dress of the couple in the foreground, and especially the man’s broad-brimmed hat, is in the fashion of the late 1620s. That date corresponds to the dendrochronological findings, namely that the panel would probably have been ready for use in or after 1626.6 That makes this one of the artist’s earliest surviving works.
The seascape entered the museum as a painting possibly by Jeronimus van Diest.7 It was then relegated to the ranks of anonymous artists for a long time. In 1887 Bredius was the first to suggest that it was by Willem van Diest.8 In 1904 Hofstede de Groot supported that attribution, but the museum’s collection catalogue of 1976 remained non-committal. De Beer nevertheless reaffirmed Van Diest as the maker in 2000.9 Although she maintained that Seascape off Scheveningen Beach is part of the Flemish landscape tradition with its use of local colour, the picture actually stands out clearly for its tonal palette, with the low horizon providing plenty of space for an atmospherically convincing clouded sky. The typical velvety brushwork in the swell of the waves and the lack of contrasts in the clouds are distinctive features of Van Diest’s later output.
Judging by the spire of the church rising up in the distance it is the Oude Kerk in Scheveningen. Living in The Hague as he did, it is not surprising that Van Diest made several paintings of that nearby beach. There is a dated one of 1641,10 and another view from 1648 is in the Historical Museum of The Hague.11
Eddy Schavemaker, 2022
See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements
Literature
C. Hofstede de Groot, ‘Kritische opmerkingen omtrent Oud-Hollandsche schilderijen in onze musea, IV’, Oud Holland 22 (1904), pp. 111-20, esp. p. 112; A. Blankert, L. Barnouw-de Ranitz and C.J.J. Stall, Museum Bredius: Catalogus van de schilderijen en tekeningen, coll. cat. The Hague 1991, p. 376
Collection catalogues
1887, p. 73, no. 589 (as Dutch School); 1903, p. 12, no. 116 (as Dutch School); 1976, p. 194, no. A 1382 (as attributed to Willem van Diest)
Citation
Eddy Schavemaker, 2022, 'Willem van Diest, Seascape off Scheveningen Beach, c. 1629', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.8285
(accessed 23 November 2024 00:15:04).